Today's Scripture
One Year Bible Daily Reading – Joshua 4-6; Luke 15:1-10
Scripture: John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
2 The Word was with God in the beginning.
3 Everything came into being through the Word,
and without the Word
nothing came into being.
What came into being
4 through the Word was life,[a]
and the life was the light for all people.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.
6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light. 8 He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.
9 The true light that shines on all people
was coming into the world.
10 The light was in the world,
and the world came into being through the light,
but the world didn’t recognize the light.
11 The light came to his own people,
and his own people didn’t welcome him.
12 But those who did welcome him,
those who believed in his name,
he authorized to become God’s children,
13 born not from blood
nor from human desire or passion,
but born from God.
14 The Word became flesh
and made his home among us.
We have seen his glory,
glory like that of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.
What does this passage mean to me/us?
Contributed by Luci Wright
At the time that John was written, the Christian church was no longer predominately from a Jewish background. The majority of members were Greek and their Hellenistic culture gave them a different perspective when reading the gospels. The traditional ways of understanding God through Jewish history were alien to the Greeks. John sought to write his gospel so that both Greek and Jewish readers could comprehend his message.
Greeks understood Logos to mean both word and reason. The Jews knew that God’s word was not static on the scroll, but a powerful and living force of creation. In his writing, John was able to relay to the Greeks that their fascination with God’s reason/mind had come to earth in the form of Jesus. He was able to combat the heresy of Gnosticism, which simply stated that God could not have created and touched matter since it was evil and the truly spiritual was far removed from the earthly world. John stressed the pre-existence of Jesus and his complete divinity. Jesus was not only present at creation, but everything was made through him. John was able in his writings to picture Jesus in such a way that both Jews and Greeks could understand his description and come to an understanding of the same perspective all the while traveling on different paths.
This truth culminated in verse 14 as we read of the glory of the Word. Jesus’ life was a manifestation of God’s glory. He was able to transfer that to his disciples and subsequently to us as we grow through the spiritual disciplines. We see in this glory not something to fear, but the profoundness of God’s love for us.
I have long cherished the opening verses in John for their beauty and succinctness in describing the heart of our understanding of God and Jesus. However, realizing that John was faced with a dilemma on making his theological understanding clear to gentile readers makes me wonder about our use of words with the next generation as well as those who are non-believers. Are we able to find common grounds of understanding to convey our message of God’s love and grace to us through the person of Jesus? We want to arrive at the same conclusion and not allow our use of traditional words to confuse or distract others from grasping the truth.
Prayer
Gracious God, in Jesus we see Your power, love and the source of all light that dispels the darkness in our world. May we realize that within our own lives and share that love and source of hope to others.
In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.
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